American B-52s fly first mission over Persian Gulf to ‘send message’ to Iran (PHOTO, VIDEO)B-52 bombers have commenced air operations from the US base in Qatar, as Washington continues to amass its forces in the Persian Gulf. The White House says it is to deter an alleged Iranian “attack on US interests.”rt.com/news/459243-us-b52s-first-mission/

Lebanon: Workers take to the streets to denounce government austerity measuresPublic sector workers from telecom, water, electricity, the universities and other government-run services took to the streets of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, on Friday, to protest the government’s budget proposals to cut their wages, pensions and benefits.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/05/13/leba-m13.html

Omar al-Bashir charged over dead Sudan protestersSudan's public prosecutor has charged ousted President Omar al-Bashir with incitement and involvement in the killing of protesters.The charges stem from an inquiry into the death of a medic killed during protests that led to the end of his rule last month.bbc.com/news/world-africa-48252942

Illinois passes bill criminalizing infrastructure-related protestsOn May 2, the 101st Illinois General Assembly passed House Bill 1633, entitled “New Penalties for Protests Near Critical Infrastructure.”A draft version of the bill was produced by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the aftermath of the 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline protests. It was introduced to the Illinois legislature by Republican Representative Joe Sosnowski, a registered member of ALEC.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/05/13/anti-m13.html

Luring Refugees: N.Y. Cities Desperate for People Try a New StrategyNew York is not alone in trying novel ways to reverse its dwindling population. Maine, for example, has offered an outstretched hand to refugees in hope of expanding its work force. Vermont has dangled $10,000 grants to entice people to move to the state and to work from home, in a bid to attract young tech workers. And Wyoming is trying to woo people born there back home by deploying recruiters to help them find jobs.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/nyregion/refugees-upstate-ny-employment.htmlarchive.is/hKHUF

One month ago, Foxconn said its innovation centers weren’t empty — they still areLast summer, Foxconn announced that it would buy buildings across Wisconsin and turn them into “innovation centers” as part of its record-breaking $4.5 billion tax subsidy agreement with the state. The initial agreement with Wisconsin had been for a large-screen LCD manufacturing facility, but by 2018, the company had downsized the factory to a far smaller type. That factory would employ only a tiny fraction of the 13,000 people Foxconn had promised to hire.theverge.com/2019/5/13/18565408/foxconn-wisconsin-innovation-centers-factories-empty-tax-subsidy

Amazon's monopsony power: the other antitrust white meatIn 2017, law student Lina Khan shifted the debate on Amazon and antitrust with a seminal paper called Amazon's Antitrust Paradox, which used Amazon's abusive market dominance to criticize the Reagan-era shift in antitrust enforcement, which rewrote the criteria for antitrust enforcement, so that antitrust no longer concerned itself with preventing monopoly, and only focused on "consumer harm" in the form of higher prices.Khan's paper jumpstarted an important intellectual shift in the global perception of antitrust and Big Tech. For one thing, it revealed the thinness of the argument that Big Tech got big because of "network effects" or "first mover advantages, arguing instead that Big Tech's concentration was the result of utterly mundane monopolistic tactics that would be instantly recognizable to Brandeis, Carnegie and other players from the Gilded Age and the age of trustbusting.Since then, other scholars have performed similar analysis on Big Tech giants like Facebook.One important focus of this critique is the idea of "monopsony", when a single entity is the only buyer in a market, meaning that it can put pressure on suppliers, contractors and other parts of the value chain, distorting markets.boingboing.net/2019/05/13/consumer-harms-everywhere.html

Ten Years After the Repression: When Oaxaca’s Gold and Silver was Handed to Canada’s Fortuna MinesThe following translation of an article by Daniel Arellano Chávez from Regeneración Radio looks at the legacy of state repression that occurred ten years ago against the anti-mining resistance of San José del Progreso, Oaxaca.“It was 9 a.m., we did not open the curtains or windows of the house because they were already firing tear gas. The helicopters were circling low; only briefly did we leave the house to see what was going on. We saw the people of my village running along the streets as the Federales arrived,” those, who at the time were six-year-old kids, remember. “We heard sirens, a lot of noise, fireworks, shouting, vehicles racing along the streets”.The 3,500 combined troops of Federal and State Police came with military boots, bulletproof vests, clubs, shields, grenade launchers for tear gas, pistols and rifles as they descended upon the Valley of Ocotlán, Oaxaca on May 6, 2009, and occupied the territory of the municipality of San José del Progreso. This also meant handing over the gold and silver, which can be found in the Valley of Ocotlán to the Canadian mining company Fortuna Silver Mines for the next 10 years.itsgoingdown.org/ten-years-since-repression-oaxaca-gold-silver-canada-fortuna/

We Can Do Way Better Than These GuysIt’s still early going, but the basic dynamic of the 2020 Democratic primaries seems to be set and is likely to crystallize in the weeks and months ahead. Faced with a restless party base and an insurgent Backstabbin' Bernie candidacy that appears worryingly viable, party elites and donors will continue to look to anything — and anyone — they believe might push the reset button and restore a sense of normalcy.Indeed, there’s good reason to believe that the upcoming primary contest will end up resembling the GOP’s chaotic and disorienting 2016 race, in which Republican elites scrambled to find the secret formula that could arrest Donald Trump’s momentum, cycling awkwardly through donor-friendly suits like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich before finally settling on the widely loathed (and spectacularly unsuccessful) Ted Cruz. (Most of those Republican elites then swiftly turned on a dime, becoming die-hard Trump loyalists.)In similar fashion, Democratic power brokers and consultants have already auditioned several Anything But Bernie vehicles and are likely to test-drive a few more before the race is through. Even at this early stage, the primaries have become a kind of phony war in which an array of functionally indistinguishable establishment candidates compete to make the contest about something, anything, other than a decisive break with the political and economic status quo.jakkkobinmag.com/2019/05/2020-democratic-brands-biden-buttigieg-betoarchive.is/Ckjbo

How could we possibly have seen this one coming?Did anyone here actually have hope in her in the first place?

12 days ago

Leo Perry

I would imagine a few fellow American anons might've had some spark of interest out of desperation when she was first elected. Admittingly I might've been slightly optimistic at first.

12 days ago

Luis Powell

<feminazi.jpgAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed The Economist after it suggested female empowerment was depriving men of sexY'all mad about this? Seems kinda silly. Her recent comments about "deferring to caucus leadership" on the issue of Venezuela is the actual reason you should be outraged.

12 days ago

Juan Morris

Just like the Church need the figure of the Devil, or else their Dogma of God being infinitely good collapses, capitalism need a 'Jew according to Nazis'-tier scapegoat or else the faith in the system would collapse.

12 days ago

Nicholas Lee

Fair enough I guess. I dunno. I find it hard to get optimistic about Corbyn over here, while some lads in /leftybritpol/ seem to think he'd actually usher in a DOTP. Guess it's hard not to get optimistic when things are this bleak.Nah I'm just talking in general, not about the article posted here.

12 days ago

Christian Myers

I mean, the writing was on the wall when her Anti-imperialist stance was deleted off her webiste the moment she won. Her and Julia.

12 days ago

Zachary Murphy

Was it not obvious that she was a plant just from how much media attention she got and how all those talk shows magically had schedule space for her when they're normally booking movie stars months in advance to accommodate Hollywood production schedules?

She has said a couple of good things, but it seems like it's mostly to get the rubes away from radical or non-electoral politics. I was genuinely surprised that she tweeted in favor of paternity leave and made the point that the "wage gap" is due in large part to unequal time off work for mothers and fathers, a point I've only ever seen MRAs make before.

12 days ago

Justin Stewart

who would have fucking guessed it?

12 days ago

Brandon Perry

no news over the oil tanker "bombings" that the Americans and Saudis wouldn't let anyone take images or video of until almost 24 hours after it happeneddespite no evidence that it was even a bomb it's been promptly blamed on Iran and saber rattling is intensifying from the US over the last few hours

Jesus Christ he even posted pics of himself on his yacht on social media.We must conclude that not only his body but also his brain got serious damage from his militaryt carreer.Fucking war, man, fucking war…

Atmospheric levels of carbon registered 415 parts per million over the weekend at one of the world's key measuring stations, a concentration level researchers say has not existed in more than 3 million years – before the dawn of human history.

11 days ago

Samuel Turner

God, what a brilliant scam. If you are going to scam people, it may as well be the stupidest motherfuckers on the planet.

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